


Cup and a Half

by sabinelagrande



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cooking, F/M, Family, Meet-Cute, Philinda 24 Kisses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 10:46:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2770181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabinelagrande/pseuds/sabinelagrande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The guy from next door is in dire straits, and only Melinda can save him. And maybe Julia Child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cup and a Half

Melinda had plans for her weekend. She was going to shop, clean, cook, read, drink wine; she was going to relax and take it easy. Instead, she finished everything she meant to do by noon, other than reading and drinking, and as it turns out, she did not pick a very good book.

Melinda is not good at relaxing.

It's almost one, now; she's contemplating whether it's actually such a sin to start drinking this early when her doorbell rings. She gets up, glad for the interruption. The worst it will probably be is missionaries, and she's learned that if you just stand very still and stare at them silently, they don't stick around long.

Instead, when she opens the door, it's her next-door neighbor; she's never actually spoken to him, just seen him now and again, waved at him a few times. He looks frazzled, to say the least. He has a streak of what's hopefully flour on his forehead, and more down the front of his shirt; one of his shirt sleeves is rolled up, but the other one has come loose, hanging open on his forearm. He looks wild-eyed, and if he didn't look so comical, Melinda might be a little afraid.

"This is going to sound like a pickup line, and I promise it's not," he says, "but can I borrow a cup of sugar?"

Melinda raises an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"I'm making my daughter a birthday cake," he explains, "because there was a mix up at the bakery, and the recipe was very misleading, and I don't have anyone to send to the store, and I don't know how in the hell I'm going to finish it before her grandfather brings her home."

"Come in," she says, opening the door wider.

"Thank you so much," he says genuinely, stepping inside. "I don't want to be the dad who pretends to know how to bake and then screws up the birthday party with an inedible cake. This isn't a sitcom."

"How much do you need?" she asks, leading him into the kitchen.

"A cup and a half of white sugar, if that's okay," he says, wincing, like she's going to get angry because he needs more than a literal cup. "I had enough for the cake, but I only had half as much as I needed for the frosting." He pauses for a moment, adding, "It's Phil, by the way."

"Melinda," she says, opening the cabinet where she keeps the sugar. "What kind of frosting are you making?"

"Caramel," he replies. "Kinda weird for a birthday cake, I know, but it's her favorite." He pauses. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You don't bake, but you're planning to make a caramel cake from scratch?" she asks incredulously.

"Yes?" he says, clearly not getting it.

She puts the white sugar down, picking up the brown and powdered. "Here," she says, putting them into his hands. "Do you have any corn syrup?"

He looks confused. "Maybe?"

Screw it, her afternoon is free and she's bored. "Do you want a hand?" she asks, because she's also kind of a sucker sometimes.

He sighs. "Please."

\--

"You're saving my life," Phil tells her, as she stands at his stove, waiting for the last bits of butter to melt. "This wasn't supposed to happen."

"You had other plans?" Melinda asks, turning the heat down to low and adding the brown sugar and corn syrup. She takes a glance at the clock over the stove; two minutes is too short to bother with the timer, and she's going to eyeball it anyway.

"I ordered a cake from the fancy place on Fifth," he says. "I made the mistake of taking Skye there. Now I have the only four-year-old on the block who begs for lavender macarons."

"They didn't come through?" she asks, picking up the milk; she waits a few more seconds, then pours it slowly in, whisking it quickly.

"Nope," he says. "I ordered it three weeks ago. I get there, and they have a carrot cake for me. Who wants a carrot cake for their birthday? I mean, I'm sure somebody does, but not Skye, and that's all that matters to me. And caramel cake is their biggest seller, so of course they'd been sold out for hours."

"So you came back here and decided to go it alone," she says.

"Until you rescued me," he says, and Melinda tries to ignore the warm feeling she gets. The icing has come to a boil, so she turns off the heat and moves the saucepan off the eye. "It's not done, is it?"

"No," she says. "It has to cool before the next step."

"Would you like some coffee?" he asks. He must see that she's trying to not flatly turn him down, because he adds, "Or tea, maybe? I have earl grey and jasmine."

"Earl grey would be nice," Melinda tells him.

"Please, sit down," Phil says, standing up and pulling out a chair from the table. The kitchen isn't all that big, and she brushes against him; she is far from bothered by this, even though she doesn't want to admit it. Phil doesn't say anything about it, but he has a little smile on his face as he fills up the electric kettle. "So what do you do, other than saving incompetent bakers?"

"I'm a flight instructor," she says.

"Really?" Phil says, looking at her over his shoulder as he turns on the kettle. "What's that like?"

Melinda never knows how to answer that question. She wants to pull her hair out about three times a day; she's come very close to decking a few rich assholes who thought they could buy their way past her; she only makes it with the help of meditation and a lot of Tylenol.

"Challenging," she says, which is the closest she's ever gotten to a real answer.

"I think I'd be terrified pretty much all the time," Phil says, as he pulls down an actual teapot from a cabinet and spoons tea leaves into its basket, which is not at all a thing Melinda expected. "Doesn't seem very comforting to leave the ground with people who only kinda know what they're doing."

"You get over it," she says. She's kind of impressed, actually, because most people aren't that perceptive. They think of blue skies and forget about the risks of it; this is also dangerously common among her students. "What about you?"

"I'm an advocate," he says, turning around and leaning back against the counter. "Mostly for children in divorce and custody cases. Basically, I protect their rights when things get messy."

"Getting in the middle of something like that sounds terrifying," Melinda says.

"You get over it," he says, smiling. "Or at least, you pretend like you do, for their sake."

Phil is very attractive when he smiles. Melinda is still trying to decide if coming over here was a good idea or not.

The oven timer goes off, and Phil opens the door, looking in; he pulls out the rack, prodding each of the round pans inside with a toothpick.

"Hey, it looks like I actually might have made a cake," he says, pulling the pans out of the oven. "Now we won't be reduced to eating icing off of cardboard."

"Was that your plan B?" Melinda asks.

"Well, this is kind of a dry run," Phil says. "Most of her friends aren't coming over today, and they're the ones who'll judge her if her dad serves cardboard and icing." Melinda isn't sure what to say about that, but thankfully, Phil goes on. "Audrey- her mom is out of town this weekend, and her grandfather is out of town next weekend, so she gets two parties. And her mom won't get her a better cake to upstage me, because she's not like that, but the cake will be better, because she is good at parties."

"You think this won't be a good cake?" Melinda asks.

Phil looks like he wants to smack himself in the forehead. "That didn't come out like I meant."

"So you and her mother are?" she prompts, telling herself she's not particularly invested in the answer.

"Divorced," Phil says quickly. "And believe me, I see the irony in that. But it was very amicable, and we're still friends. Skye was barely two, so hopefully she won't think it isn't normal for things to be like this." He rubs his forehead. "I'm sorry for giving you my life story. It's been a long day."

Melinda knows that she doesn't actually have to say anything substantive to that statement; the polite thing to do would be to say that he's not bothering her and let it go. She doesn't have to offer anything else.

"My ex and I never had any kids, thank God," she says instead, standing up.

Phil picks up the kettle, filling the teapot and setting the timer. "Wasn't amicable?" he asks.

"Not in the least," Melinda says, plugging in the battered electric hand mixer she brought with her. She puts the beaters into the icing and turns it on, tipping the powdered sugar in a little at a time. She's glad for the noise; she can definitely do without a conversation about her ex, especially right now. There are definitely other things she'd rather talk about with Phil, even if she's still actively trying to talk herself out of being interested in him.

It's not at all working. Better just admit that now.

When the powdered sugar is all incorporated, she takes the beater out, resting it on the counter, and scoops up a little of the icing with the back of a measuring spoon. "Taste this," she says, holding it out to Phil. "It's not quite as rich or as smooth as real caramel, but it's almost impossible to screw up."

Phil cautiously tastes it. "Are you magic?" he says, looking at her.

"My mother is a good cook, but a very impatient one," she says, ejecting the beaters from the mixer and pulling them out of the icing. "Caramelizing sugar is a pain in the ass." A responsible adult would rinse off the beaters and put the mixer away; as much of a responsible adult Melinda is, she also never got to lick the beaters as a child, and it is her extremely belated indulgence. "Want one?" she says, holding a beater out to Phil.

"Am I going to put myself into a diabetic coma?" he asks, taking it.

"Are you diabetic?" she asks.

"No," he replies.

"Then probably not," Melinda tells him.

"Good enough for me," Phil says, licking it.

Melinda is struck by the patent absurdity of this moment. An hour and a half ago, she was minding her own business, and now she's eating icing out of the bowl with the guy from next door, whose name she hadn't even known but who is apparently more handsome and interesting than she bargained for.

She puts her beater down on the wax paper the powdered sugar was on, and when she turns back, Phil is looking at her. "What?" she asks. He's not looking into her eyes, his gaze focused at her mouth instead.

"You have some icing on your lip," he says, flicking his eyes up to hers.

"Oh?" she says. She knows exactly what's about to happen, and she doesn't move away, doesn't bring her hand to her mouth, doesn't even lick her lips. "Where?"

"Right here," he says, leaning in and kissing her. That flimsy pretext lasts about ten seconds, if that; he puts his arm around her waist, pulling her close, kissing her far more intently than is necessary for icing removal purposes. She nudges him backwards until he's against the counter, lacing her hand in his hair. This is probably not the best way to start something with someone, but right now it just seems obvious. This whole situation has already been weird enough; what's a little more?

Suddenly the tea timer goes off, and Phil pulls away, sighing in frustration. He doesn't let her go, just reaches over and turns it off, setting it back on the counter. "We'll water it down," he says, kissing her again, and Melinda has no complaints about that at all.

A little while later, there's a knock on the front door, followed by the sound of it opening, and this time they do break it up. Phil quickly combs his hair down, straightening his shirt, and Melinda has definite flashbacks to high school. Not a minute later, a little girl comes running into the kitchen, an older man trailing behind her.

"Daddy!" she shouts happily, and Phil scoops her up, hugging her tight. 

"Hey, birthday girl," he says. "Did you have a good time at the park with Pop-Pop?"

"I played with ladybugs," she tells him.

"And ran her granddaddy halfway across the world," the other man says, slipping out of his jacket and hanging it up by the door. "I'm an old man, sunbeam."

"We played chase," Skye says, seemingly unperturbed by this.

"Thanks for taking her, Dad," Phil says. "Dad, this is Melinda. She lives next door. Melinda, this is my father, Nick." Melinda isn't going to say anything to Phil about the fact that his daughter is Asian and his father is a large black man, but he clearly notices her not saying anything about it. "We adopt," Phil says, shrugging.

"Nice to meet you," Melinda says.

"Likewise," Nick says; he's giving her a very clear "Please explain what you are doing in my son's kitchen" look, but he doesn't add anything else.

"Skye, Ms. Melinda made you a cake," Phil says.

"A birthday cake?" Skye asks brightly.

"Yep," he says. "Your favorite."

"Can she come to my party?" she asks.

"We still have to ice the cake," Phil says, looking at Melinda hopefully. Nick is looking at her like he's daring her to say no; Melinda already has the distinct sense that he doesn't take kindly to people who disappoint his granddaughter.

"Sure," Melinda says, and Skye smiles widely at her. "I just need to run home and change. The cake should be cool enough to ice by then."

"Then do," Nick says, taking Skye. "I'll handle this one. Take a shower, Phil, you look like you got into a fight with the Pillsbury Doughboy."

"Yes, sir," Phil says, sighing. He looks at Melinda. "See you back here soon?"

"I'll be here," she says. He looks so pleased that Melinda wants to kiss him again, though she knows what a spectacularly stupid idea that would be. 

Nick gives her a look that says he knows exactly what's going on, but he doesn't say anything about it. "Come on, sweet pea," he says to Skye, carrying her away. "Let's get you some party clothes."

"Thank you," Phil tells Melinda. "You have no idea how grateful I am."

"Maybe you can show me sometime," she says, just to see him blush, which works perfectly. "I'll be back in fifteen."

"Right," he says. "Cake. Party. I can do this."

She pecks him on the cheek. "I'm pretty sure you can."

Phil smiles at her again, that smile that does something to her, and Melinda knows she is definitely in trouble.

She's definitely not bored, though.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Philinda 24 Kisses, with the prompt "sugar".
> 
> And if you are ever in need of foolproof caramel icing in a hurry, try this:
> 
> 2/3 cup butter or margarine  
> 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar  
> 1/3 cup milk  
> about 3 cups confectioner's sugar  
> a little dark corn syrup (optional)
> 
> Melt butter in saucepan. Add brown sugar and corn syrup; cook over low heat 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add milk slowly, stirring constantly, and heat until mixture comes to a boil. Remove from heat and cool about 10 minutes. Gradually add confectioners' sugar until frosting is of right consistency to spread, beating well after each addition. Wait until cake has cooled to frost. Devour.


End file.
